


a fucking miracle

by kirargent



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, POV Raven Reyes, Post-Canon, Survival, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 05:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5151380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirargent/pseuds/kirargent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven’s fucking freezing and her leg is screaming for her to stop trekking through the snow and they’re not going to find anything, they’re not, she knows they’re not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a fucking miracle

**Author's Note:**

> [ravenbells](http://ravenbells.tumblr.com) requested bellamy/raven + #87 (food)

The snow was a delight when it first fell. Wet, thick, cold, and filling the air with a sharp-clean-wet smell nothing like anything any of them had ever experienced. It blanketed everything, white and pretty; it smoothed the outlines of the radioactive forest, of their pieced-together shelters. A miracle.

A fucking miracle.

A miracle that’s stuck around for months now, freezing the ground into rock-solid un-usability and sending the creatures of the land into hiding somewhere where the Ark survivors have had no luck finding them. In short: it’s freezing outside, help is a pipe-dream, and they’re all fucking starving to death.

It’s Bellamy’s idea to go out scouting. Raven tells him bluntly that it’s stupid, that they’ve already explored the nearby area and _there’s nothing out there, Bellamy_. But if Raven’s ever met a rival in her stubbornness, it’s Bellamy Blake. Once he’s been gripped by an idea (terrible though it may be), he can’t bring himself to sit around in camp doing nothing when he could be out there looking for food, for ground not too frozen to plant in, for—for anything to help them survive.

The idiot has a point. Trudging through snow that sucks at their legs with every step, Raven can’t help but think— _at least we’re moving_. It’s reminiscent of the running machines built for keeping people healthy in the confined space of the Ark: they may be running in place, but at least it _feels_ like they’re going somewhere.

 

 

(Monty has constructed greenhouses. They’re small, shabby, made of stray bits and pieces. The floors are raised from the frozen ground, and he’s dug up and defrosted piles of dirt. They only have so many seeds to plant, but it’s something. Or, well—it _will_ be something, given some time, once things have grown. For now, they’re still fucked. But—it’s better than nothing.)

 

 

After Mount Weather, they thought they’d be set: the supplies in that shelter could’ve kept them going all winter, easy. But they’d returned to Camp Jaha, regrouped, and gone back—only to find an encampment of Grounders between them and the mountain, already planning to claim its goods. And like, Raven gets it. She’d probably be hostile, too, if some teenage girl swooped in from out of nowhere and decided a village full of lives was no more valuable than “collateral damage.” (She gets it—this doesn’t mean she doesn’t still spit _those fucking Grounders_ , and _that fucking Clarke_ , every time a kid drops from hunger.) So their path takes them the opposite direction of the mountain, forging through snowy forest at a dismal pace, Raven’s leg only slowing them down further.

“Have I mentioned,” she says, more out of breath than she wishes she was, “that this is a terrible idea you’ve had, Mister Blake?”

He’s walking ahead of her; she can’t see his face. Still, she knows him well enough that she can recognize an eye-roll from the set of his wide shoulders. “Mister Blake?” he repeats.

“You prefer ‘janitor’?” she bites. It’s an asshole thing to say. But she’s tired, and her leg fucking aches, and this _is_ a terrible idea, and she can’t bring herself to care.

Bellamy’s shoulders don’t slump, nor do they tighten. She watches him shrug. “Less responsibility,” he says, as if considering the idea seriously.

Raven rolls her eyes. She shoves away the thought of days past when her life consisted of: shit breaks; she gets a call; she fixes shit; next job. She tells herself she’s not breaking under the strain of trying to solve every problem on her own, ones that fit her skills and ones that don’t.

They keep walking.

 

 

(Raven thinks Lincoln wanted to help them before he left, but he always hesitated. Likely, he knew that any haven of supplies or sheltered animal hideouts he could direct them towards would only lead them into conflict with Grounders. She’d seen his face on the day he went, just before the snows came: mouth set and eyes grim, like he knew what a shitty time they were in for. At the time, she’d figured the expression was their fault, for not being willing to trust him, for the adults refusing to accept a Grounder into their midst. It was all kinds of fucked up, Raven thought, so she blamed his tight jawline on that. But maybe she just didn’t want to think that he might know something about the future.)

 

 

They’ve been gone for days. Raven hopes Monty is still alive, Miller, Sinclair, Monroe, Mel. The snow flutters down in dainty little flakes of death, always filling in their footsteps, always shushing softly through the quiet air. It’s calm, and peaceful, and lovely—and Raven’s fucking freezing and her leg is screaming for her to stop trekking through the snow and they’re not going to find anything, they’re not, she knows they’re not.

“Do you ever think about not going back?” she asks abruptly, ignoring the burning ache of her leg. Her voice is clear, breaking through the solidity of the quiet.

Bellamy half glances over his shoulder, still walking. The image of his leanly strong figure dragging through the snow burns behind Raven’s eyelids when she lies down at night; it’s been her view for at least four days.

It’s a while before Bellamy answers.

He doesn’t always answer her questions—sometimes they just hang in the snowy air until the winter swallows them up, and she won’t ask twice. She thinks he might not answer this one, but then he does.

“To camp, you mean?” he says carefully. Doesn’t want to accidentally answer a question she didn’t actually ask, give away something bigger than necessary.

“Yes.” Short, honest. “Like Clarke.”

There’s another drawn out silence, and again Raven thinks he won’t answer. She’s fine with that. He asked her, two days ago, if sleeping with Wick made her feel any better, and she didn’t speak to him for the rest of the day. This is—working for them, somehow. Endless quiet, endless opportunity for talking, endless acceptance of non-answers because that’s who both of them are.

“Yes,” he says finally.

He doesn’t say _but I’d never go through with it_ , but she knows the truth of it anyway. He doesn’t say _that would be too selfish_ , but she knows that’s why he’ll always stick around for those kids. He doesn’t say _I hate the responsibility but I love them_ , either, because he doesn’t have to.

They walk on.

 

 

(Every once in a while, someone will catch a fleet-footed squirrel, darting through the woods with unfortunate timing. It’s enough to keep them going. Sort of. Not really. It’s not enough.)

 

 

“I know it hurt you when Clarke left,” Bellamy says.

Raven is silent, although she considers saying, _Yeah? Good for you_.

She doesn’t know why he said it. She gets it, he knows her, he can tell her why she does stupid things or why she collapses into tears and can’t name the problem. It doesn’t mean she likes that anyone knows her that well.

As far as Raven’s concerned, the better you know how a machine works, the better you are at dismantling it so that it can never be reconstructed again.

They keep walking, and neither speaks again for the rest of the day.

 

 

(Raven suggested, earlier on in the winter, that they build a bomb, or try to ignite an engine—scorch away some of the snow to allow them to plant. But its constant falling meant the ground would only be re-carpeted, and in any case there’d be nowhere for baby roots to grow but into unforgiving, hard earth. Raven dislikes unforgiving, hard Earth.)

 

 

“What do you think?” Raven asks, finally looking away from the sight in front of them and at Bellamy instead. He has less freckles than he did in warmer weather. She notes this, files it away as important, for some reason, and moves on, awaiting an answer.

“I think,” he says slowly, eyes still ahead, “that we might’ve walked far enough that they won’t be hostile if we have things to trade.”

Because that appears to be what they’ve stumbled across, by fate or luck or something worse: a Grounder trade-post, bustling with the movement of fur-clad people.

Raven narrows her eyes. “We can’t go down there.”

Bellamy glances at her. “Because?”

“Because it’s stupid, that’s why.” She casts her gaze back to the trade-post. “How do we know they won’t kill us on sight?”

Bellamy’s voice is low. “We don’t.”

She looks at him.

He doesn’t have any more of a fucking clue what he’s doing than she does.

This is comforting, somehow.

She takes a breath, nodding, and hears herself say, “Okay.”

His mouth moves with what might almost be a smile.

 

They keep walking.

**Author's Note:**

> [also on tumblr](http://kirargent.tumblr.com/post/132618372791/how-about-87-for-bellamy-and-raven)


End file.
